Twitch Crash Course
Understanding Twitch and its site is helpful not only to streamers but to the moderators that handle their chats. There are many built-in features that help not only the quality of life of users but also just make the overall site a fantastic way to grow your community and network. Affiliate vs Partner Affiliates and Partners are two of the three types of streamers out there, and the two that are technically employed and paid by Twitch. Affiliate is an easier rank to reach and gives a user some of the same avenues to make money as Partners do, but have fewer features than Partners have. Partners get more preferred treatment from Twitch, but Affiliates still get many of the features that Partners get. You can read more about Partners here and Affiliates here Bits, Donations, and Subscriptions/Members Many streamers have links setup under their streams mostly through a site called Streamlabs that allows viewers to donate them money to support the streamer. It is very imperative to mention in your donation explanation that there are no refunds, as some users like to abuse the refunding feature through PayPal to cost the streamer more money dealing with chargebacks. When you hit either the rank of Affiliate or Partner, you get access to the features of Bits and subs. These are ways to make money that is paid through Twitch, as they are Twitch based payments. Subscriptions have three tiers, a $5, $10, and $25 tier of recurring payments to the streamer. Twitch does, however, take a cut of the profits, and depending on whichever contract you have with Twitch depends on how much the cut is. Subscriptions give users the ability to use channel specific emotes added by the streamer in the chat as well as all over Twitch. Subscriptions can also be gifted by other users to someone with the user gifting paying for just a one-month subscription that does not recur. Memberships are the YouTube version of Twitch's tier one $5 subscriptions. This is done not by subscribing (as YouTube has that for following a channel) but by "Joining" a channel. Bits * Twitch based currency and can be purchased through Twitch itself. * Used for donating to streamers in a “cheer”. * 1 bit = 1 cent to the streamer. * 100 bits costs the user $1.40 USD, so twitch gets 40 cents on the dollar for bits. ** If you buy bits in a bigger number the price gets better. VIPs VIP users are a new feature added to twitch as of November of 2018. They are users given a role by the streamer who can bypass most of the channel’s chat settings. Things like slow, sub only, or followers only chat modes, message limits are bypassed by the VIP role as well as gives the ability to post links. Automod Automod is a feature built into Twitch that is your first line of defense when it comes to your chat. You can read the extensive details here, but here’s a quick rundown of what it does. Protects your chat from harmful comments and words your streamer (or you) can set and edit at any time. * Mostly blocks hate speech, sexually explicit language, aggressive and hostile language, as well as profanity. * Includes a whitelist and a blacklist for words and phrases to block/unblock based on what your streamer accepts in chat. * Will block the messages appearing in chat, but for moderators, it will show the message and you can approve or deny it from being posted. * Has multiple levels of moderation for how severe chat needs to be checked for blocked words. Mods have the ability to add, edit, or remove words from the stream's blacklisted words. You can access this by clicking the gear icon in the bottom left of chat then going to "Manage Moderation Settings" then clicking "Blocked Terms And Phrases". This is useful for easily stopping a set word or phrase from ever appearing in chat again on the fly. Chat Log Recently Twitch has added the ability to moderators to view a user's entire chat log in a channel. When you click on a user's name, it will display how many messages the user has sent in the channel, the number of timeouts and bans, as well as a place for moderators of a channel to leave comments for each other. These new features are very useful as they can let you go back through the user's history to see if they are someone that is a constant trouble maker especially if you are a new moderator. More information on these new features added can be found here. Hosts and Raids Hosting a user is what happens when a streamer wants to send their viewers on to another streamers stream. This generally happens after their stream is over or if they are having difficulties and need to get things working again. This can be done from in the chat by typing /host (username) or from going to said streamers channel and using the host button on their stream. When a user sends their viewers over in a bigger number, they can be known as a raid. By typing /raid (username) in your chat, you can send your viewers onto another stream, which is generally accompanied by a raid message. Something that a streamer may say before they send over their viewers to show another streamer the support of their community. At this time there is no real built-in way to raid others on YouTube so we will stick to Twitch for now. Autohost Autohosting is something that a streamer may set up for people that they enjoy watching or that they want to support. You may add multiple people to your autohost list, and it will automatically host (or make your stream show another user’s stream) when you are not streaming yourself. If multiple people on your autohost list, it will host in descending order, so whoever is at the top of the host list will always have first priority, and then it goes from there. Categories, Games, and Tags When finding the audience to watch your channel, it is good to understand how to utilize features like categories, games, and tags. Categories and games fall into the same section, where you can pick what you are doing on your stream to be listed under that category when a user is searching for something to watch. Things like the new IRL tags (ASMR, Just chatting, Music, etc.) as well as any specific game you are playing fall under this section and are an easy way to be discovered for doing what you do. Tags, however, more fall under what type of stream you are doing and are set by Twitch, so you can’t make your own. These are mostly used to help a viewer decide if they want to watch a stream before they click on it. For example, say you are doing a playthrough and you are going for a 100% completion run, you could use the tag ‘100%’, or if you are playing alone you could use ‘Singleplayer’. Teams A team is a group of streamers, somewhat of a community that is user-driven, mostly used to help people grow. You have to be invited to a team and they provide some benefits to streamers, however, make sure not to get taken advantage of by any possibly toxic teams. More can be read about them here. Chat modes There are a few modes built into Twitch that can help control chat when it may start to get out of hand, and they are all listed on this Twitch documentation. They are pretty self-explanatory by name as well: * Follower Only Mode ** Activated with /followers (insert time length up to 3 months) ** Only people who are following the channel for that specified length of time can talk in chat. * Sub Only Mode ** Should only be used in extreme circumstances, and if your streamer isn’t a Twitch Affiliate or Partner, only them and the moderators will be able to talk in chat. * Slow Mode ** Activated with /slow where the number is how long users need to wait between messages to send another one in chat. * Emote Only Mode ** Activated by /emoteonly ** Makes it so only users other than moderators, VIPs, and the streamer can only post emotes in chat. * R9K Mode ** The only weirdly named one. Activated by /r9kbeta. ** This is a feature designed to stop repeated messages, like if users keep spamming the same things to get “noticed” or you have a toxic raid on your hands. * Clear Chat ** Not really a chat mode, but is very helpful if chat has been hit with something like a toxic raid. ** /Clear wipes the entire chat history up to 200 of the past lines. Extensions Extensions are applications built by devs working with the Twitch API to make applications that connect to the stream. Sometimes these work in panels in a streamers description, other times they work with the stream themselves and can provide functions to the stream. More can be read here. Ghost Viewers and Lurkers Ghost viewers are viewers who stay in a users stream after they are no longer streaming and can still be seen in a streamers user list. Sometimes they are bots, but other times they are just people who may have left the stream open. Lurkers, on the other hand, are users who may not want to talk in a chat but like to be in the streams these members will also show up in the user list. Special Users in Chat There are a lot of users who will stop by a channel no matter the size and it is important to not make the chat about them. Shouting them out or giving them some attention and talking to them is fine, but completely changing the conversation to be about them should be avoided. The main two groups who fall into this category are Twitch Staff and other partnered streamers. Twitch staff are shown by the wrench icon that is beside their name. They are employees for Twitch and sometimes drop in and interact in peoples streams. While it can be exciting to see a staff member and interact with them in chat, they are most likely there to enjoy the stream like everyone else. They should be treated as a normal viewer unless they have explicitly stated that they are there for a different reason. Other partnered streamers will stop by from time to time in many streams for different reasons. It is exciting to see someone you may respect stopping by your stream you moderate but it is important to keep a level head and not 180 the conversation like mentioned before. Maybe they will drop by with a raid or host sometime on your streamer which would be very helpful for growing an audience, however focusing on them and bugging them constantly might push them away as well.Category:Pages